Love Triangle: Three Sides to the Story by Brenda Barrett Read Free Book Online

had taken her husband; she was now going to give him a child or rather she was losing his child.
    “Marie, are you there?”
    She slammed down the phone in his ears. How much more can one woman take from a man?
    Marie sat on the edge of the bed, and assessed how much emotional damage the news that Karen was pregnant for her husband was doing to her. I am still alive and breathing, she thought. Okay, that’s a good first step.
    Let’s think of happier times Marie, like the first time you brought home Timothy from the hospital. My God, Karen was almost going to carry home her first child for my husband.
    I can do this I don’t have to think about this madness. I can cope. I can cope. The hot tears trickled down her face. I can cope. The shudders began the toe-curling shakes that overpower a body when you are completely without resistance emotionally.
    I am going to die. I know it. I don’t even have energy to reach for the telephone and to speak.
    “Marie, Marie … ” She vaguely heard George’s frantic call.
    “She’s in the room.” Her mother’s voice and her cool hands touched her hot forehead.
    “You were right; she’s trembling like a leaf,” she said to somebody in the background. “Put on the hot water, I am going to draw some chamomile; it will calm her nerves.”
    The last thing Marie remembered was being forced to drink the foul tasting tea and then nothing. She was out like a light.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    Karen
     
    “You are one lucky young lady.” The doctor smiled at me. “You were brought here just in time. Nurse, you will make sure that she gets lots of rest.”
    “Yes, Doctor,” Shauna nodded.
    “When will I get to leave?” I asked the doctor incredulously. I was a little piqued that they were completely ignoring me.
    “In another three weeks or so. We’ll just have to see.” The doctor smiled at me and patted my hands absently. He left the room after whispering to Shauna in the corner.
    “Shauna,” I called to her after the doctor left, “you have to get me out of here. I can’t breath, I hate this place. Where is George?”
    “First of all, this is a private room paid for by George the toad, who could not make it because his wife is ill.”
    “Oh, no. I forgot about that. She answered the phone when I called. Could it be that I caused it?” Karen stared wide-eyed at Shauna.
    Shauna sat on the edge of the bed. “Calm down. Don’t get yourself in a tizzy. If you are calm, you will have this baby in one piece.”
    “But … ”
    “The calmer you are, the sooner you get out of here,” Shauna interjected, using the argument that she knew would get me to shut up.
    Long after Shauna left I wondered about Marie. I was sure that she knew about me because George said he had told her. I just never thought about her reaction or what it would have done to her life. It was not that I did not care about his wife and children; it’s just that it was always easier for me to think of them as rather distant from the situation that I found myself in.
    I realised with a start that I was so caught up in my life and my problems that I barely spared a thought for his family and the fact that this baby would be related to his other children. If George ever took an active part in my baby’s life that Marie would irrevocably become involved.
    I hardly knew anything about his family life or relatives, except his mother.
    I felt so bereft that for a moment I felt my belly begin to cramp again. The same sensation I had earlier when after trying George at his office I called his cellular phone and got his wife.
    What a disaster, I could just hear the acid dripping from her tongue as she said, ‘I am his wife.’
    How was I to know that he left his phone at home? I was in such deep pain that I did not care how he got the message; I just wanted him to get it. If Shauna and Boyd had not returned from their excursion, I would surely have miscarried.
    I must have dozed off for a while. When I woke up,